Bret Bielema

About 50 miles northwest of Hollywood, not long after Sam Darnold ended an exhausting session as the star of the Pac-12 Conference’s media days, a quarterback offered a ball up into the swirling winds of Ventura.

A receiver sprinted underneath and caught it for a touchdown.

“OK!” a teammate yelled from the sideline at the quarterback. “OK, I see you Ricky Town!”

Stripped of context, Town’s presence here would not be considered abnormal, and it would not qualify his career as a bust. He’d committed to Alabama but flipped to USC, then transferred less than two weeks into training camp, to Arkansas. He never sniffed the field, but he worked hard and stayed out of trouble....

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